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Friday, July 25th, 2008
It is not worth describing what Cipriano Algor thought about because he had thought it on so many other occasions and we have supplied more than enough information on the subject already. The only new thing here is that he allowed a few painful tears to run down his cheeks, tears that had been dammed up for a long, long time, always just about to be shed, but, as it turned out, they were being reserved for this sad hour, for this moonless night, for this solitude that has not yet resigned itself to being solitude. What was truly not a novelty, because it had happened before in the history of fables and in the history of the marvels of the canine race, was that Found went over to Cipriano Algor to lick his tears, a gesture of supreme consolation which, however touching it might seem to us, capable of touching hearts normally not given to displays of emotion, should not make us forget the crude reality that the salty taste of tears is greatly appreciated by most dogs. One thing, however, does not detract from the other, were we to ask Found if it was because of the salt that he licked Cipriano Algor's face, he would probably have replied that we do not deserve the bread that we eat, that we are incapable of seeing beyond the end of our own nose.
A dog licking tears from the face of a crying human is a central image in Saramago's work, as much as I've read of it so far anyway. And it is touching -- the other times I've read sequences like this, they have touched me as symbolizing the depth of connection between the dog and his master. But another way of looking at it that is occurring to me now, is how painfully lonely, to be weeping in a place where there is no other person present.
 (The clause after "truly not a novelty" strikes me as funny in a sort of self-referential way -- it could be rendered, "What was truly not a novelty, because it had happened before in books I have written,...")
posted evening of July 25th, 2008: 4 responses
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As I was getting in my car this morning, I found I was whistling a tune, and wondered what tune it was. Aha! It is Heebie-Geebie's new song, "My Neighbor"! Excellent -- I only listened to it once and it is already in my ear. I got some issues with the first part of the verse but in sum I think it's a very fine song.
posted morning of July 25th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, July 24th, 2008
 I was moved just now to look up and see who Sylvia's new school is named after. Turns out the man was an inventor and engineer who lived in Newark, and then later in Hilton, the town which is now the easternmost neighborhood in Maplewood.
There is a statue of him in Washington Park in Newark, the little triangle of grass outside the Newark Museum -- I have seen that statue many times but never looked at the name on it. The statue was erected in the 1890's*; here is a New York Times article (PDF) from 1909, about a memorial exhibition of his tools opening at the Newark Public Library.
This carven bronze! In face and form it stands
To honor him, a son of toil so true
That from his brain and never tiring hands
Labor was crowned with dignity anew!
For him dull iron welded firmest bar,
And steam and gold gave out a secret lore,
The round sunlight beams sent him from afar,
And silver wielded best of molten ore.
We went to a picnic this evening for new Seth Boyden kids and parents. Seems like a lot of kids from Marshall are transferring over to Seth Boyden for next year!
*Unveiled on May 14, 1890, further research reveals -- Newark's Central Labor Union boycotted the unveiling because the company that erected the memorial did not use union labor. Also: the Times obituary for Mr. Boyden (second one down), and a notice of his funeral -- their archives get pretty hard to read that far back. The Boyden homestead in Hilton burned down in 1903. (All these links are PDF's -- looks like scans of old Times microfilm.)
posted evening of July 24th, 2008: Respond
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I want to start putting together a mix tape of love songs. Seems like the right thing to do right now. Now it would be really easy to put together such a tape using only Robyn Hitchcock tunes but I don't want to roll that way... I think I will include "I Feel Beautiful" and either "Arms of Love" or "Heaven". (So many choices! My first thought was to open the mix with "Birds in Perspex" and end it with "Ride".) Anyway: time to start thinking about non-Hitchcock love songs...
posted evening of July 24th, 2008: Respond
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Dear Internets,
I have a problem, which is my young daughter was listening to my iPod
and went messing with the settings (I told her not to, but does she
listen? She does not), and set the maximum volume to quite soft. When
she was doing that, she put in a 4-digit password, which she promptly
forgot. What can i do? Google-found pages advise me that I should use
windows explorer to navigate to the iPod's "IPod Control\Device"
folder and delete the file called "volume locked" -- I did this to no
avail. (Somehow the iPod is only available via explorer while iTunes
is synching its content, then it disappears. Google also tells me
there should be a way of enabling it always to show up in Explorer but
I'm not getting anywhere with that.) I'd be happy to do a cold reboot
of the iPod if only I knew how. Pressing the Menu button and the
center button together for a few seconds appears to do a soft reboot,
and not to affect the Max Volume setting.
Help please! I want to listen to my music loud!
posted morning of July 24th, 2008: 2 responses
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Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
Sylvia comments that the King and the Duke's plan to perform a Shakespearean exhibition (featuring the balcony scene, with the King as Juliet, and the sword fight from Richard III, and the King doing Hamlet's soliloquy) reminds her a lot of Moominsummer Madness. And I think she's on to something; Jansson could very well be referring directly to this scene. That's assuming Huckleberry Finn was translated and available in Finland in the early 20th C., which seems to me like a reasonable assumption. An interesting moment was explaining to Sylvia why it would probably not be a good idea to read Huckleberry Finn out loud while we were on the airplane flying to California.
posted evening of July 23rd, 2008: 2 responses
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Coincidence: the two times this year I have gone to the beach, I've taken along a book by Saramago -- he works really well for a relaxed read, lying in the sun. I'm not sure what it is exactly -- he's very "heavy" -- it takes a lot of thinking and re-thinking for me to get it. But the sun and the sand seem to help that along. A couple of nice bits from this weekend's reading, below the fold:
...It would help to clear my head too, so why don't we both go and pick Marçal up, and Found can stay here to guard the castle, If that's what you want, Don't be silly, I was just kidding, you usually go and fetch Marçal and I usually stay at home, so long live usually, No, seriously, we can both go, No, seriously, you go. They both smiled, and the debate on the central question, that is, the objective and subjective reasons we usually do what we do, was postponed.
Indeed, whether we mix water and clay, or water and plaster, or water and cement, we can cudgel our brains for as long as we like to come up with a name that is less vulgar, less prosaic, less common, but always, sooner or later, we come back to the word, the word that says all there is to say, mud. Many of the best-known gods chose mud as the material for their creations, but it is hard to know now if that preference represents a point in mud's favor or a point against.
We have already mentioned the fact that many anthropogenic myths made use of clay in the creation of man, and anyone moderately interested in the subject can find out more in know-it-all almanacs and know-it-almost-all encyclopedias.... There is, however, one case, at least one, in which the clay had to be fired in the kiln for the work to be considered finished. And then only after various attempts. This singular creator, whose name we forget, probably did not know about or did not have sufficient confidence in the thaumaturgic efficacy of blowing air into the nostrils as another creator did before or would do later, indeed, as Cipriano Algor did in our own time, although with the very modest intention of cleaning the ashes from the face of the nurse.
I might just as well drive the van into a wall, he thought. He wondered why he didn't do so and why he probably never would, then he listed his reasons. Although inappropriate in the context of his analysis, after all, being alive is, at least in principle, the main reason why people kill themselves, the first of Cipriano Algor's strong reasons for not doing so was the fact of being alive...
Also -- I got a chance to read some passages to Sylvia, mainly involving the adoption of Found by Cipriano and his daughter, and she seemed really into it. Sylvia thinks Found is better behaved than Pixie.
↻...done
posted afternoon of July 23rd, 2008: Respond
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Friday, July 18th, 2008
So after a spate of short and varying-degrees-of-silly posts, I'm going away for a coupl'a days -- my cousin Andy is getting married! So Sylvia and I are jetting off to San Diego this evening. Be back on Wednesday or thereabouts.
posted morning of July 18th, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, July 17th, 2008
 I did not know until today about Joss Whedon's new movie (movie? I don't see any indication that it will be in theaters -- it is an internet phenomenon but it sure looks like a movie), Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Just now I watched the first episode -- what a great thing this is! Nothing to say about it yet other than, go take a look.
 ...Oop, well, you can't go take a look any longer, not without paying at any rate.
posted evening of July 17th, 2008: 2 responses
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Tonight we went to the local park to watch a screening of Wallace and Gromit -- the three shorts, "A Grand Day Out", "A Close Shave", and "The Wrong Trousers".  Wonderful movies, and nice to watch them outdoors on a hot summer night. I was wondering if anybody had noticed the resemblance between Pixar's character WALL•E, and the robot that lives on the moon in "A Grand Day Out".
...Yep, well, A.O. Scott noticed the allusion in his review of WALL•E -- which I read a couple of weeks ago! I didn't catch that at the time... Google tells me a lot of other reviewers caught it too.
posted evening of July 17th, 2008: Respond
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